


One Night In Mid-December

by FourCornersHolmes, I_am_lampy



Series: After All These Years [15]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Rimming, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 04:54:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourCornersHolmes/pseuds/FourCornersHolmes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_am_lampy/pseuds/I_am_lampy
Summary: Sherlock discovers he needs reading glasses, which makes him a little blue. John tries a little something different in bed to make Sherlock forget his woes.





	One Night In Mid-December

* * *

 

"The printing quality of these newspapers goes down every day,” Sherlock huffed. “I suppose they're cutting costs on printing since they’re having to compete with free online newspapers - including their own. But I need to be able to lay it out and let my eyes roam over it until something catches my eye - well something _might_ catch my eye if the damn printing wasn’t so smudged!"

John looked over to where Sherlock sat. He was on the couch with the day's newspapers spread out before him on the coffee table. Sherlock's complaints weren't new. John had been listening to them – well, rather more to the point, _not_ listening to them as much as possible – for months now.

It was a new routine and it went like this:

Sherlock would complain about the quality of the newspaper printing.

John would say something like _hm, that's terrible_ , something meant to give the appearance that he was listening when he wasn't doing anything of the sort.

Sherlock would throw a newspaper down in disgust and pick another one up and complain about its poor printing quality.

John would murmur something else that sounded like he was attending to Sherlock's rant.

Sherlock would reach the end of his patience – which was roughly equal to Rosie's – before throwing it all down in disgust and tasking John with going through the papers to look for something that might be case-worthy.

"This is _The Guardian_ , John! You would think they, at least, would still invest in quality printing!"

John had written off Sherlock's whinging as anxiety over the upcoming wedding but they had decided to postpone the wedding until the following Christmas. Sherlock's mother and John's friend Gina had pointed out all the things they had to plan and that it simply could not be done in a month. John and Sherlock had quickly agreed and bought themselves another few months of respite from Mrs. Holmes's and Gina's constant phone calls, text messages, emails and sample deliveries.

The decision had been made a week ago, though, and as Sherlock continued to complain it occurred to John that the simplest answer to Sherlock's problem was that he needed glasses. Probably only reading glasses at that, the kind you could pick up at Tesco for five pounds.

"It's your eyes," John said, without looking up from his book.

It took Sherlock a minute to register what John had said – his complaining had so consumed him it was almost like no new information could squeeze its way in.

John looked up. "Go get your eyes checked."

"It's not my eyes, John! Don't be ridiculous. I have the sharpest eyes of anyone I know. Besides, you're much older than me and your eyes are fine."

"I am not _much older_ than you. I'm five years older than you, you knob."

"Five years can make a huge difference," Sherlock said.

John got up and walked over to the couch and snatched the paper out of Sherlock's hand and looked it over.

"It's fine," John said, tossing it back down on the table. "Go get your bloody eyes checked."

"It's not _fine_. It's all smudged! Look at that!"

"Sherlock," John said, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his forehead. "Hold it up in front of your face, about arm's length and then tilt your head back a little so that you're looking at it from the bottom of your eyes."

"What on earth does that mean? What do you mean _the bottom of my eyes_?"

John snatched the paper up again and did exactly as he had explained. He held it at arm's length in front of his face, focused his eyes on the paper and then tilted his head back about ten degrees without changing the position of either his eyes or the paper. Then he tossed it in Sherlock's lap.

"Try that and if you can read it better from that angle it's because you need glasses."

"You look ridiculous. Is that actually based on science or are you just making it up?"

"Oh, that's right, I forgot. I got my medical degree in quackery. Just do it, you twat."

"Give me a scientific explanation and I _will_ do it."

" _Fine_. You understand how we see, yeah? The lenses in our eyes refract light particles off of the object we're looking at and send them back to your retina which tells your optic nerve what you're looking at. Close objects need more light particles and therefore a fatter lens to refract them. Further objects need less light particles and therefore a thinner lens to refract them.

"Tiny muscles and ligaments work to adjust your lens depending on what you're looking at. After the age of forty, the ligaments begin stiffening up – natural aging process – and it's harder for them to adjust. Since most of what we look at is further away, the lenses get stuck being thin in the middle and fat on the edges. So if you tilt your head you're forcing the light refracting off of the object to enter through the _edges_ of your lens, where it's fatter rather than having to rely on your gimpy little ligaments to fatten it up for you."

Sherlock looked at John suspiciously while John smiled back at him. Then Sherlock did what John had said, all the while making it clear that John's scientific explanation was clearly fabricated just to trick Sherlock into performing such a ridiculous looking gesture. Nonetheless, Sherlock tilted his head back about ten degrees while looking at the paper without moving either his eyes or the paper. There was a pause during which John saw Sherlock's jaw muscles twitch minutely.

Then Sherlock tossed the paper on top of the rest, got up, and stormed off to their bedroom, his dressing gown swinging open behind him.

John grinned to himself. Sherlock needed glasses.

* * *

Sherlock spent the evening being very cool towards John but John was used to Sherlock's moody nature. It was Sherlock's night to give Rosie her bath and John could tell that even with Rosie, Sherlock was subdued. While Sherlock did that, John built up the fire in the fireplace – Sherlock almost couldn't be trusted to do it without bits of hot charcoal flying out and scorching something – and then they got Rosie dressed and kissed her goodnight.

As soon as Rosie was in bed, John put the kettle on, got out two mugs and two teabags and made them each a cup of tea.

"Here," he said to Sherlock, who took his tea without saying thank you and who had always and probably would always take it without saying thank you.

John sat down in his chair, took a sip of his tea and set it on the table next to his chair. Then he picked up his ancient Kindle e-Reader and started to turn it on before he stopped and put it back down. Sherlock was staring into the fire, his legs stretched out before him. Damn the man was long – his feet were halfway across the floor towards John.

"Sherlock," he said.

"Hm?"

"If something isn't within your power to fix or overcome, it doesn't mean you're any less amazing, you realize that, right?"

"Look, if this is about the stupid – "

"Turn your face to me, Sherlock," John said. He wasn't ungentle when he said it but his voice made it clear that Sherlock needed to Pay Attention.

Sherlock turned his face towards John but he didn't meet John's eyes.

"You spent so much of your life controlling your body so that nothing could affect the working of your mind. Just because you need reading glasses – which isn't something you can control, mind – doesn't mean that your mind is losing its sharpness."

"I know that, John," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes. He got up before John could say anything else. He stalked around the sitting room and into the kitchen and back again, picking things up and putting them down, muttering under his breath. He lay down on the couch and steepled his fingers under his chin and then he got back up and rifled through the stuff on the desk, pretending to be interested in the bills that John had paid that day but not yet filed, mixing everything up with everything else, like a child with finger paints who looks at the kitchen table and only sees a canvas rather than something that shouldn't be painted.

John tried not to sigh loudly because then Sherlock would ask him why he was sighing and John would say _I had everything organized on there and you just mixed it all up_ to which Sherlock would scathingly remark _I hardly see how the way it looks now is any different to the way it looked_ and John would either bite his tongue and save them a row or not bite his tongue. Sherlock would twist everything John said and throw it back at him with his particularly scathing brand of sarcasm, leaving John flustered and cornered and the whole thing would end up with John trying to physically intimidate Sherlock.

There had been a few occasions when it had led to some truly spectacular sex but the amount of times it resulted in great sex was significantly less than the amount of times it resulted in each of them giving the other the cold shoulder, sometimes for an entire day. If they hadn't had Rosie to force them to cooperate, John had no doubt that Sherlock would give John the cold shoulder until he needed something from John, no matter how much time had gone by. He had no doubt about it because Sherlock had been doing it to him for ten years.

John smiled to himself. Very little had changed in their relationship and yet that _very little_ was almost everything. It was almost like both nothing and everything had changed. It was hard sometimes to wrap his head around.

"Sherlock," John said.

Sherlock whirled around and looked at him imperiously. "What?"

"Come give us a nosh," John said and gave him a cheeky smile.

"A _nosh_ ? When did you become a nineteen year old idiot? A _nosh_ . What self-respecting adult says _nosh_?" Sherlock blustered, pulling his dressing gown tighter around him as though he could protect himself from John's coarse behavior.

"C'mon, you know you want to, posh boy," John said and couldn't help the laugh that burst out of him before he reined it in.

Irene Adler had called Sherlock _posh boy_ – she had meant it in a snarky and condescending way. It was an insult and a judgment couched in a lighthearted tease. John had taken it and stripped it of condescension, yanked out the insult, shoved out the judgment and then he had wrapped it up in his love and admiration for Sherlock. He had made it _theirs_.

"I don't want to _give you a nosh_ ," Sherlock said, staring down at the papers on the desk and then John saw it – the tiniest smile – before Sherlock rearranged his features back into a frown.

"That's a shame, that is," John said, standing up.

Sherlock watched John walking over to him out of the corner of his eye.

"And why is that a shame?" Sherlock asked, his voice already deeper with arousal.

John looked up, grabbed Sherlock by the chin and rubbed his thumb over Sherlock's bottom lip.

"Because this mouth looks so gorgeous wrapped around my cock," John murmured.

Sherlock licked his lips and then dropped to his knees and John automatically carded his fingers through Sherlock's hair. Sherlock was in the process of pulling down John's pajama bottoms when John abruptly stopped him.

"What?" Sherlock asked, looking annoyed at the interruption. John almost laughed.

"Let's do something different," he said instead.

"Like what?"

Despite Sherlock's brilliant mind and his ability to notice the minutest details and spin them into a conclusion nobody else could make, he could be surprisingly unimaginative. John could see Sherlock's brain whirring, trying to figure out what they could do that they hadn't done before and coming up empty.

"Upstairs," John said and pulled his bottoms back up. "I don't want to wake Rosie when one of us shouts out something filthy."

"That was your fault," Sherlock said, pushing ahead of him up the stairs.

"Oh, it was my voice then saying _please ride my slutty ar_ – "

Sherlock shut him up with a kiss but when John tried to deepen the kiss, he pulled away.

"New rule," Sherlock said.

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Any dirty talk we have during sex will not be repeated when we are not having sex."

"You're the one who runs your mouth all the time, madman," John scoffed. "I'm quiet as a mouse."

"Hardly," Sherlock huffed. "You are marginally less demonstrative than me, I'll allow."

John pushed Sherlock's dressing gown off his shoulders and then quickly divested him of his t-shirt and pajama bottoms. When Sherlock reached for John’s clothes, he smacked his hand away.

"I said we would try something new, yeah? Were you not listening?" he asked, running a finger from the hollow at Sherlock's throat down his chest, stopping at his pubic hair. "I want you on your hands and knees on the bed."

"I'm not in the mood to be penetrated tonight, John," Sherlock said in the usual stiff and clinical way he spoke when he had to say something he thought would be received negatively.

"I'm not going to penetrate you, you git. Just do what I told you."

Sherlock, naked and getting hard, did what John said.

"Lower yourself onto your elbows, Sherlock," John said, his voice husky with desire.

Sherlock lowered himself, essentially presenting his arse for John.

"Am I allowed to ask what you're doing?" Sherlock asked.

"Right now I'm just admiring the view," John said.

Before Sherlock could make a snarky comment, he felt John parting the cheeks of his arse and then wet heat teased around his entrance.

" _Oh – ah_!" Sherlock cried out, surging forward, realizing that John was licking his arsehole with his tongue.

"Hm," John hummed against his hole.

This was definitely something they hadn't tried before. It wasn't even something they had considered – well, Sherlock hadn't considered it. In the fourteen months he and John had been together, he had not once thought _I would really like John to fuck my arsehole with his tongue._

John kept circling around the edges of the the puckered flesh, while Sherlock's cock quickly filled with blood. He reached back to stroke his erection but John's hand cracked against Sherlock's arse cheek hard enough to drive him forward.

"Hands off," John said in the low and dangerous voice that sometimes left Sherlock panting with eagerness.

Sherlock moved his hand away and was rewarded with more teasing at his opening. He was so hard his foreskin had retracted behind the head of his penis. The head itself was flushed with blood and looked almost purple. His slit was beading with pre-cum. He wanted to rut at the sheets but he knew bringing himself off would result in an orgasm that would pale in comparison to the one John would eventually give him.

John's hand gently grazed the cheek he had slapped and Sherlock braced for another hit but John only leaned down and kissed that cheek, his tongue still working at Sherlock's hole leaving him panting, his mouth open in unadulterated rapture.

John's tongue suddenly plunged into Sherlock's opening and his hand cracked down on Sherlock's other cheek. Sherlock buried his face in the mattress to muffle his embarrassing vocalizations.

"I want to hear you," John said before plunging his tongue back into Sherlock.

"John," Sherlock groaned. "You're fucking me with your tongue."

"Obviously," John said, breaking away only long enough to tease Sherlock.

When John bent to his endeavor he again surprised Sherlock by sucking one of Sherlock's testicles into his mouth. His tongue swirled against the gland, drawing more of the choking grunts out of Sherlock's mouth.

"I never knew – " Sherlock gasped " – how talented – _ah_ – your tongue was."

John didn't say anything because his tongue was too busy sliding along Sherlock's perineum. John's tongue was tormenting Sherlock, leaving a trail of fire everywhere it went. John sucked the other testicle into his mouth again tonguing at the gland. Sherlock's cock had dribbled enough pre-ejaculate onto the sheet that a wet spot had formed roughly the size of a pound coin.

"John, please," Sherlock moaned. He had been reduced to sexual torment, every stroke of John's tongue leaving him slowly coming apart.

"Please what, madman?" John purred.

"Please let me come," Sherlock begged.

"I think I would rather see you come without your cock being touched at all."

"No, no, that's a _horrible_ idea," Sherlock groaned.

"Sh, it’s okay," John murmured before guiding Sherlock up and onto his back. When he saw the state of Sherlock's erection he growled, "Fuck, Sherlock, that's – "

Speechless, he buried Sherlock's cock in his mouth taking it all the way to the base. He worked his tongue along Sherlock's length every time he plunged down and sucked at the head, licking into Sherlock's slit when he bobbed up again. Sherlock was so undone with pleasure that he didn't last long.

His legs began to tremble. He planted his feet on the bed and shoved himself up into John's mouth and came, convulsing as John sucked down his semen, licking up every drop before Sherlock fell back, completely wrecked.

"You fucking gorgeous man," John moaned.

He pushed to his knees and stroked his own weeping cock frantically until he came, his ejaculate jetting over Sherlock's stomach who tried to lift his head to watch but fell back against the pillow in a euphoric stupor.

John dropped his head onto Sherlock's chest, still on his knees, unable to move. When he could finally work his legs, he got up.

“Gonna get a damp flannel,” he mumbled.

Sherlock heard his feet trudging down the stairs, impressed that John could even work up enough energy to do that.

Sleep stole up over Sherlock before John got back. John cleaned him up gently so as not to wake him. Then he lay down beside Sherlock who rolled over in his sleep to bury his face in John's neck.

"Mm, told you something different," John murmured before sleep took him too.

**Author's Note:**

> I always welcome emails from readers about anything that tickles your fancy, even if it's just randomness!
> 
> archiveofMYown@gmail.com  
> Teddy


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